Overview

As outlined in Vision and Scope, Microsoft word plans to release four new features and two bug fixes in its next update, entitled Q1-3 Features. Q1-3 Features will be released to North America, India, China and Japan. This will necessitate translation and localization of both the software and the user documentation.

Service Providers

Translation and localization of the user documentation will be handled by the same companies that are providing translation and localization of the software itself. This will reduce the costs of outsourcing to different companies and ensure the accuracy and consistency of terms, styles, graphics, and references to the software.

Crystal Hues Limited will localize for India,

Golden View Technologies will localize for China, and

Adept Corporation will localize for Japan.

Expectations

Assumptions

The companies translating and localizing the documentation will have access to the finished software. Furthermore, because these are the same companies that were used for previous translation and localization needs, they will have access to previous documentation and the complete software program. This will allow them to reference previous translations and ensure consistency through all the documentation created to date.

Responsibilities of the Service Providers

The companies listed above are responsible for localizing both the software and the user documentation associated with the release of Q1-3 Features. This means they will have access to the localized software before our team does. For this reason, and because their teams are much larger than ours, these companies have been further contracted to provide localized versions of the screen captures used in the documentation. They will receive the in-document screen captures in English and be responsible for recreating them from the post-localized software.

Schedule

The documentation team will begin to send content to be translated on May 1st at the latest. Any content that is complete before this date will be sent out upon completion.

Localization should begin on July 1st. By this time, the companies listed above should have begun localizing the software itself. Therefore, they will have ready access to accurate graphics with which to recreate the screen captures used in the documentation.